


The Burial of the Dead

by Hamstermoon



Series: The Hollow Men [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Not Series Three Compliant, Other, Post-Reichenbach, This is not the Mary we see in Series Three either
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:24:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2643209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock jumped of the roof of St Bartholomew's Hospital John Watson realises that, despite his confusion, he has to stop mourning and make sense of everything. Meanwhile Sherlock is doing his best to return to his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> After many months of not working on this fic, and dashing around doing other things in life, I finally feel the need to do something with it. I did get some things (in fact a lot of things) right when we finally got the reveal in the Empty House but I’m still not happy with how that episode played out. This is a bit of fix-it and AU at the same time, adding details and extending events to make things more sensible. Since I originally created the story I’ve taken it down to restructure and to add some thoughts in that I’ve had since the airing of Series Three. I'll be putting it back up chapter by chapter as I edit them and maybe I might get to finish it this time. I created the cover art myself with that umbrella for a reason; we'll get there in the story eventually.

 

[ ](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/v7yWdDx2EPJfjkKTFsATwdMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite)

 

_April is the cruellest month,_

_breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,_

_mixing Memory and desire,_

_stirring Dull roots with spring rain._

  
 

 

 

** The Wasteland - The Burial of The Dead **

T.S Eliot

** In the Beginning **

John looked at his watch. He knew was going to have to move from this bench in a moment, but for the time being he stayed sitting down.  It was easier on his leg like this, and today was one of the first days this spring when it  was reasonably pleasant to sit still in the open air.  He’d drink his coffee and then move off; the time was coming up on midday and the office workers around Smithfield and employees at Bart's would be starting to fill the streets looking for lunch.

It wasn’t a good idea to be found hanging around here too often really,  people knew him and they knew his story. Molly or Mike Stamford, or  security staff, or even  some of the lab techs he knew from Sherlock’s time, could spot him and he didn't want that. He was getting to have a bit of a reputation for hanging around the building his flatmate had fallen to his death from, and that wasn't a good one to have.

Molly had caught John as he hung around here in the early days. Unfortunately where he’d stood watching Sherlock fallwas where buses turned at the end of the cul-de-sac which was West Smithfield.  In  February, only two weeks after Sherlock's death, Dr Hooper had grabbed John out of the  road and the  path of a number 56 bus and scolded him on standing out in the minus temperatures. 

‘Sherlock would never have wanted this,’  Dr Hooper had said with hard eyes, 'and standing about in the cold isn't going to help your leg.’ A hurried mug of tea in Bart’s staff canteen  was doing nothing to warm him up.

‘Yes, well, he should have thought about that before he jumped off a bloody hospital roof shouldn’t he?’ John muttered wondering where the bus had come from. He was sure he'd stood for ten minutes talking to Sherlock and there wasn't any sign a car, never mind a bus in the road. He  limped off not staying to watch the hurt look on his friend’s face or see their disappointment in him.

Molly had been right about the cold though. It  really  had done nothing for his leg which was stiff and aching, pains shooting through the muscle. His walking stick was a permanent, necessary feature these days. There were teeth gnawing at the scar in his shoulder too as he got off the tube,  and he had had to go home and soak long in the bath at 221B. Even paracetamol and whiskey in his tea did nothing to stop the pain, only mute it. 

This lesson in the British weather’s effect on his body, and the fact that he needed to draw less attention to himself, meant John had been more fleeting with his visits  to the hospital  and more careful with his timing. He used the  nearby  Rotunda Garden that sat above the subterranean car park for Smithfield Market.  It was far away enough for him not to draw attention but he could stand behind the War Memorial there and look  up at the  lonely roof  where he'd last seen his friend standing.   With his leg he could only manage to do this for a few minutes at a time, and the view, only partially blocked by trees  now would be no good when the leaves unfurled later in the year. He’d have to find an alternative.

_** ********************* ** _

Today there was a new piece in the jigsaw puzzle that had become his life since his flatmate’s suicide and since he had woken that morning. He had needed to come here to think having woken out of a dream in which Sherlock was talking to him, trying to point something out, and John was still trying to remember what the dead man had said.  Something about not paying attention (not anything surprising there then) but also something about, _there are people out there who know the truth John, you have to talk to them_.  

When he had woken this morning he’d felt he needed to feel in touch with Sherlock. That was what Ella his counsellor had  gently suggested him  on his most recent visit to her ,  so that was why he  was back at Bart’s . At this time in the morning, on a Saturday , West Smithfield was  almost deserted.  It always was quieter in the City of London at weekends when the financial workers were away. 

It was no good going to Sherlock’s grave. That place might as well be  somewhere  in Wales as in the oddly named Old Paddington Cemetery that was really in Kilburn in West London.  That was only a short ride via Abbey Road on the 189 bus from Baker Street, and then a short walk up Willesden Lane to visit the place where Sherlock wasn’t.

He’d not been invited to the funeral because there wasn’t one, and Mycroft had only told John where his brother’s ashes were interred after the event. There was a headstone  and a wide lawn of grass, but that wasn’t where his flatmate’s heart was. That was why John always came back to Bart’s. Sitting on a seat, able to look up to  the roof this friend had fallen from, his own feet only a few inches from where Sherlock’s head had been lying when he’d walked round the bloody Ambulance Station which blocked his  view.

He  was once a soldier, is still a soldier, and has  seen war and carnage and blood before. Today he has to stop mourning and make sense of it all.

_** ********************** ** _

He  checks his watch again and realises he has about fifteen minutes left before lunch hour and heaves himself up onto his feet with his stick. Time to get moving then, he knows Molly is in today because  Lestrade had texted to get him to come and help with yet another Locked Room Murder. John wasn’t interested.

He gets up painfully, the leg is getting a  stiffer not less these days, and  it’s not  the doctor  who  he is  that thinks he’s  getting old. He’s  not been getting the exercise he used to but no longer has the energy he once had .  There was something energising about running after his flatmate at all hours of the day and night. That is something else  he needs to sort out , getting fitter again, but for the moment he has more pressing things to work on.

What would Sherlock have told him to look for if he was looking into the heart of this baffling mystery? What would his friend deduce about a man who threw himself from the roof of a hospital for no reason?  This is what is confusing John, for Sherlock to suddenly burst into tears and sob confessions was totally unlike the detective he knew. Sherlock never, once, was worried about what other people thought of him. Being stuck in a corner only ever made Sherlock work harder and think smarter about the case in hand.  John stops the sob which is threatening to escape from his chest, steadies his breath and concentrates.

Where he is standing  on the footpath the shadow of  Pathology blocks out the spring sunshine flooding from behind it. It is darker here than the roadway further  out, and if he stays here he’ll be able to watch the shadow shrink as the sun climbs higher in the sky and over the building towards him.  He looks round him  on the footpath, he has clear sightlines both to his left and his right. There is an old-fashioned red telephone box  next to the main gate to the hospital.  On  Giltspur street running towards  Newgate Street oddly enough there is phone box but  this time it’s a glass 1980 ’s one. There are also  bike stands and a bus shelter at the edge of the kerb where the number 56 buses stand.  Today there is only  one red single  decker idling by the kerb , sometimes there are as many as three and  usually  they are the double deck buses  needed to carry weekday passenger numbers. They swing round here in quick succession , coming to the end of the London Transport route they run on and then starting out again .

This is enough to confuse John in these facts alone.  Why when Sherlock was standing on the roof, and he was standing in the roadway way, were there no buses  to  get in his way ? Why  did no bus arrive to run him over?

He remains seated and now looks at the building in front of him.  Smithfield Ambulance  Station is  a long, squat shape of a thing  made of brick. There are cars drawn up in  parking spaces on the side which is visible from where he is sitting. He doesn't remember them being there on the day everything happened here so that’s something else which stands out as odd.

Also odd  is the rectangle of stones in the pavement below his feet. This is where  a bus shelter, now moved further along the path, was before the big facelift West Smithfield had a couple of years ago. He knows about that because although it was before he and Sherlock spent so much time here both Mike and Molly have  made reference what a nightmare all the  roadworks created.

Of course there is a more sinister aspect to this part of the pavement. This is where Sherlock landed, probably City of London street-cleaning operatives tidied up after the initial gory event because there is no sign it ever happened. Since then there has been rain  too,  and even the sudden, surprise, fall of February snow that stopped London in its tracks. All this has erased any sign that John's friend died here; it might as well be as if it has never happened.

John sighs and gives up. Perhaps he needs to go and get warm and eat something, and ground himself. There is a requirement to remind himself  that  he is alive even while Sherlock is not. It’s not far to the Barbican tube station from here, and only a few stops back to Baker Street on the Metropolitan Line.  He can come and  take up his search another time perhaps; it’s not as if he’s doing any working these days. Sherlock has left him a legacy, a payment each month in lieu of a salary, and Mycroft is paying for the flat. There is nothing he needs to do to earn a living if he doesn't feel the need to work.

Taking a deep breath, he turns to head for home, or at least the flat that passes as the place that he lives. It's not been home to him since his flatmate stopped being a living inhabitant there.


	2. Damage Limitation?

In the area, want to come for a coffee? GL

Are you stalking me!? JW

You are getting predictable in your old age, John and I said I WAS IN THE AREA. GL

LOL You are very funny. Where? JW

Starbucks, Paternoster Square? GL

Give me five minutes to hobble over. JW

 

****************

John does hobble over, having had to change his direction and rather than go back through West Smithfield he detours via Little London and Postman's Park. He has to dodge a school party making their way to the Museum of London, and another making its way through Paternoster Row in the shadow of St Paul's, but the Detective Inspector is waiting in a seat by the window at Starbucks. Greg waves when he sees John and getting up shouts across the seating to tell his friend to sit down while he gets him his drink. This involves both of them navigating the usual coffee shop occupants of mums with baby buggies, creatives sitting working at laptops and a group of tourists all poring over a large paper map spread on a table. Eventually John sits down relieved, cursing having a limp and a walking stick to make things so difficult.

'So why ARE you stalking me?' he asks Greg when the DI returns to his own seat with a large cappuccino for John.

'I had the morning off to see the solicitor and was in the area,' he answers. 'Needed to have another look at my victim in the morgue too,' he adds.

'So how did it go with your ex?' John replies preferring the divorce chat rather than police business and gets grunt and a screwed up face in return from the man sitting opposite.

'We have a court date, which is a relief,’ the DI tells him. 'I couldn't have handled many more of the arguments we've been having, she never gives up does she?'

John nods, 'Just don't do any more asking if I'll help with your locked room murder,' he says pre-empting being asked. 'I'm not helping no matter how many times you try and persuade me so don't start on me again, yeah.'

'No, no, I'm not even trying,' Greg says shaking his head, sitting back further in his chair, 'but you'll have to help me on something. I met Dimmock on the way out yesterday. He tells me that he's been put in charge of our end of the IPCC  investigation we knew was likely to happen.  Both the superintendent and Sherlock's cases are going to be featuring very highly in what they are looking at.' He looks grim and John feels sorry for putting his friend under pressure.

'Christ, Greg, of course I want to help with that,' John replies, 'and I'm glad that you've only been rapped over the knuckles so far. I was really worried there they might do something worse.'

'Yeah, don't talk to me about it,' Greg responds with very real confusion in his eyes. 'I'm not even sure WHY nothing worse has happened. The Superintendent somehow took more of the heat than me,' he says shaking his head. 'He lost his job and I didn't, what the bloody hell happened there?' he spreads his hands with a shrug. 'The case against you for chinning him for us, which was much appreciated by the way, seems to have gone missing too. ‘He takes a swallow of his coffee cheerfully.

John nods, and is looking thoughtful. 'I have a feeling in my water about damage limitation of some sort, although it’s even going over my head as to why,' he replies and Greg is nodding too.

'I hear you,’ Greg says, ‘who'd you like to nominate to be the suspect?'  John sees that his friend may also have come to a similar conclusion to him and it’s not just police detective intuition that has brought him to it.

'Let’s say there has always been someone who has had his immaculately manicured fingers in too many pies,' John offers pulling a face, there’s a quip somewhere there that Sherlock is not here to make about his brother and it hurts. 'I wouldn't put it past that someone to be involved even now, right up to his elbows in this if I ask you.'

'Yes, he always could be annoying sod,' Greg agrees, 'but if he is helping I’m relieved. It doesn't make him any less guilty for his involvement in Sherlock's death,' he says with a frown that says he's not forgiving himself for being involved either, 'but at least if he _is_ helping then he might be showing some remorse.'

John nods again soberly. 'I don't think anyone can be forgiven for the mess we made there, Greg, everyone’s to blame in this one,' he replies, ' we can at least try to do our best to clear his name for him.'

‘Amen to that,’ Greg replies as solemnly raising his paper coffee cup, and John copies his example

 ‘To Sherlock,’ they both say.

***************

When John gets finally home, after stopping outside 221B to talk to Mrs Turner's "Married Ones" outside Speedy’s, he struggles upstairs.  Everyone he meets locally is being so solicitous, and his very gay next door neighbours are also very worried and trying to help if they can.

John has thanked them no matter how many times they ask after him, but he knows what he'll find on the kitchen table when he gets upstairs though. As usual there's a supermarket bag of groceries coming from some unknown benefactor.

Before there would have been and messy, dangerous clutter of Sherlock’s experiments in the kitchen. Now the open space is worryingly empty and clean and has only the marks of a few chemical spills in the wooden top. There is that scorch mark too, where, in his impatience, his flatmate knocked over something smouldering. Sherlock was so wrapped up in his experiment he'd only put out the fire when John had thrown down his newspaper leaping up out of his chair to shout a warning.

At least with all the food arriving he's given the impetus to eat, and he does so now, opening the bag and setting out the contents on the table top before putting them away. He toasts bread, and opens a tin of baked beans to put in the microwave, the curried flavour today he notices. He then makes himself eat a banana, and a swallows a multi-vitamin pill from the replacement pot; he has just run out and the _someone_ supplying the groceries knew.

Often when he comes back from being out of the flat, from a solitary wander, from trip to see his therapist, or one of the very infrequent nights at the pub with Greg or Mike, there will be a bag of groceries and sometimes also toiletries. Sometimes it’s from Tesco, sometimes it’s more up-market Waitrose. That comes from further afield, it’s a half a mile from Baker Street to Marylebone High Street, or someone is bringing it in from another store somewhere else. Sometimes it’s Marks and Spencer’s, and M & S is on the corner of Baker Street and Oxford Street so that is not far. Occasionally, and usually when he’s been out late at the pub with Mike or Greg, someone even knows his favourite takeaway from the local Chinese or Indian.

Maybe this is Mycroft's Holmes interfering in his life again. John doesn’t have the energy think about who is leaving these food offerings for the moment. Whoever IS doing this, looking after his welfare, is saving him the energy he doesn't have left to expend. He has too much to think about and too much emotional baggage to be carried round to be thinking about looking after himself.    

He takes a mug of tea to the sofa and watches the Six-Clock News on BBC News24 not paying much attention to it. The murder Greg is investigating is being featured, the television providing background noise while he tries to read a book before dozing and eventually rousing himself to go to bed.          When does the nightmares are as regular as they used to be; he’d got used to that so there’s nothing new there. The fact that sometimes the concrete and stone of London replace the grass and gullies of Afghanistan is slightly different though.  The PTSD symptoms returning; waking up in a panic, sweating, with his heart racing, shaking so much it often leaves him trembling even when he eventually gets out of bed, well that IS new. It’s something he is going to have to deal with, and for that he needs to sort through his own head and start talking to someone, perhaps his counsellor Ella.

Today is Friday, so it’s his usual day for his weekly visit to her. For that he gets a taxi to a street in leafy West Hampstead, appropriately just down the road from the Freud Museum. He rings the bell, and when the buzzer announces the door is open goes and sits quietly in the pastel coloured waiting room until the patient before him leaves. As his hand is shaking so badly this morning he has to politely decline the cup of coffee the receptionist offers him. He’s afraid he might spill it and so he spends his time staring at the print of a Japanese Zen garden on the wall opposite.  Then the door to Ella’s room opens and a tearful Indian woman with a sleeping baby in a car carry-seat comes out. She tries to smile at John as she passes, and his years of being a medic kick in and he’s giving her that calm sympathetic look that doctors give.

The counselling session, as usual, doesn’t really get very far. Ella asks him about his week and he replies with sentences of a few words, but he’s not in the mood to talk. The nightmare this morning shook him, and he’s not used to therapists waiting patiently while he has to explain everything going on in his mind minutely, and in detail.

He tunes out; and goes into his own head for a moment. Were Sherlock sitting in the seat opposite his flatmate would have deduced what John was thinking, in a moment. They would have discussed it and then they would have moved on and he would have got on with his life. He misses having someone who knew him, or was able to work out enough about him, so they were as aware of what was going on in his head as clearly as he was himself. That was what made Sherlock so easy to get on with. His flatmate may have been arrogant, obsessive, unsociable and sometimes downright argumentative, but he could see down to John's soul with just one look.

Ella is talking again. John has to mentally shake himself, stop thinking of Sherlock sitting in the chair opposite and tune back in to his therapists words. He has to blink and refocus to clear the misting image in front of him that his unshed tears are causing.

‘John, you have to be reasonable about this,' Ella says in a sensible voice and looking concerned. She's spotted the fact that he'd been away in his head and wants to bring him back to the present. She pauses a moment and then, choosing her words, and then giving him the direct look that he feels is asking too much of him at this stage in his grief, asks; 'how long did you really know Sherlock for?’

John thinks that is a bit of a silly fact for his therapist to demand of him. He shifts in his seat, taking a deep breath to make the words leave his chest. ‘You know how long,’ he says carefully, trying not to break down over the emotion (is it anger?) the woman before him is creating, ‘we’ve spoken about this before. Why are you asking?’ he says gritting his teeth.

‘I need you to tell me again,’ Ella says looking at him calmly, the counsellor not being put off by her upset client's feelings. She wants to get to the bottom of all this but John is still annoyed at how can she be so calm about things. ‘How would your friend have put it?’ she says, ‘in exact days and months I would have thought, John, you always told me how precise he was. It will help us if you can tell me that.’

‘One year, five months and twenty one days,’ John says immediately, and without a pause. He doesn’t have to think about it, having stared too many painful times at the calendar on his computer desktop. Counting the months back and forth hadn’t helped. They hadn’t magically multiplied or extended or changed, and time hadn’t rolled back so that he could be there for Sherlock and do things differently. If he’d stayed with his flatmate on that day, instead of going back to check up on Mrs Hudson, he could have stopped this nightmare happening, stopped his friend jumping of that stupid roof. Why was he put in that position to have to choose? It was a totally unfair Catch 22 situation no-one should have had to deal with.

‘One year, five months and twenty one days,’ he says again tasting the words. Sherlock could probably have added hours, minutes and seconds to the sum, but it’s as near as damn as he, John Watson, can work out. Such a short time for one man to make such an immediate and lasting impression on anyone. Such a short time to make a friendship that should have endured years.

‘That's good,’ his counsellor responds, her face is thoughtful, John can see she is about to try and make him think about all this differently. He doesn't like it when she does that, and braces himself for what is to come. ‘Let's try something else,' Ella offers, 'can you tell me how long you had known some of your friends in the Afghanistan before they were killed?’

John's response is immediate and said without thinking. He will regret this later he knows, as Ella asks questions that get painful answers. ‘Christ, years,’ he says. Some of those the friends he had had in his unit during basic training, amongst the ranks he’d known, the men they lost every day, who been lost in the field and who he had fought alongside, all the men had died under his command. They were many, and many had been good friends, but there was one, only one, who stood out in this conversation. ‘We lost a lot of men, good men,’ he says, ‘but Jeff Ackroyd and I went right back to the day when I joined up.’ He still misses the older man fiercely; Jeff was everything that was good about being in the army, and the big bluff Scotsman had been a great friend to him, especially in the early days of his basic training.

Ella is looking pleased with herself, as if she has found a weakness in John that she can exploit with her psychology. ‘Exactly,’ she says nodding observing John’s reaction, and looking him with that serious almost-stare of hers, ‘that's great, John. I would suggest that you need to think about what you said there. I think it tells you a great deal about the situation we are dealing with. The loss of your friend Sherlock may be a tragedy but you have lost better friends.’

John's heart sinks.

**********************************

The weekend is a washout and John doesn’t want to stray from home, preferring to stay indoors and out of the wet. The weather is echoing his mood really, what Ella said on Friday has upset him a lot.  The fact that she thinks the death of long-term friends he’s had in the forces should have affected him more than the loss of Sherlock makes him almost feel ... sick. That is enough to make him sit in his lonely chair beside the cold fireplace in Baker Street and stare at the wall for almost a day.

He only ventures out into the real world on Monday when he runs out of milk because his mysterious benefactor, the one who brings supermarket plastic bags of groceries to his kitchen, hasn’t called round. That is probably because the flat occupant at 221B hasn’t vacated his home for two days.  As soon as the weather gets better he is sure he’ll take himself for a walk, John assures himself feebly as he staggers to bed late on Monday night. He doesn’t know how long he is going to be able to keep this up, living day-to-day with his grief, but for now that is all he can do. He’s not going to give up on Sherlock yet.

Tuesday dawns bright and shining, as only an early spring morning in London can do when the weather finally sets its mind to being fine. John is lying in Sherlock’s bed, his bed since he started sleeping downstairs because of his leg, with the sun coming in through the thin curtains. Suddenly he feels restless and has the need to be DOING something to break this whole stalemate. It is time to begin his day.

He rises and dresses quickly and efficiently, and then picking up his stick carefully makes his way down the stairs from the flat. As he walks into the outside world John is in luck, and there is a taxi passing down Baker Street. He hails it and gets in, telling the cabbie to make his way to Bart's Hospital in West Smithfield.

When they get there, to the roadway below the fateful Pathology building, John steels himself not to look up and instead follows his driver across the road. The cabbie has got out of his vehicle and locked it up, giving his passenger a grin; he’s also after a full cooked breakfast. Beppe’s Cafe over there may be famous for the frosty service from staff, and small bijou size, but it’s a proper London 'Caf' and the place of choice for cabbies in this part of the city to have their break or a brew. It’s also where John has eaten a few times when Sherlock was busily employed doing unspeakable things in Bart’s morgue, and he wanted a break from the staff canteen.

John fortifies himself with eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and fried bread and washes it all down with a mug of tea. Then taking his plate and mug back to the counter, and thanking the person who served him, he takes a deep breath, turns the door handle, and starts out on his way again.

Thankfully at this early hour the rush of traffic into the City of London hasn’t started yet. He’ll have half an hour or so to do what he needs and then he can decide how to spend the rest of his day. If the person behind the counter, and several of the other cabbies in the Caf, are looking at him a little strangely, well he can deal with that and move on. Since Sherlock’s death people have been doing this a lot, giving him a longer gaze than usual (their expressions more than curious) and then looking embarrassed when they are caught-out staring. John realises that they have either recognised him from all the publicity in the papers Sherlock created, or he is giving off some sort of aura of mourning clearly visible to the general public. That wouldn’t surprise him in the least, he is sure he can feel it resting there on his shoulders as he walks, bearing down heavily as he moves.

Today he’s decided that, rather than sitting on a bench in his usual position at the foot of Pathology, he’s going to try to view this part of London from another angle. Perhaps things might make a little more sense this time. This is his reason for getting a taxi here, rather than the Tube and walking in from Barbican or St Paul's. Start from where the taxi dropped him on that fateful day. Still keeping his eyes in front of him he heads for one of the benches, those strange, modern blocks of pale stone, which grace the strip of pavement between West Smithfield and Long Lane.

There are also cherry trees he notices here suddenly, one by each bench, and covered in pink blooms now spring has arrived. While these trees will live the seasons onward, losing their leaves in the autumn and returning to life with flowers in the spring. Sherlock will never be here to see them or make some snide comment about the stupidity of human excitement at this sign of the change in the seasons. In John’s heart though this place will always be stuck in the winter day when Sherlock took his fall from the roof.

John picks the bench nearest him to sit down on. It’s easier on his disability and even though he is not standing in the road he has a perfect view from here. No having to risk an unstable right leg and the more regular weekday no. 56. As he sits there he watches two double-deckers passing on their turn around the West Smithfield Ambulance Station. How on earth he managed to stand here and talk to Sherlock, and for all that time, and not get knocked down by a bus he will never work out.

For some reason today he feels surprisingly calm, perhaps it was the decent breakfast he's just had. He can always think better on a full stomach, and that was why Sherlock used to make sure that, even when they were out in the middle of a case, he’d get a proper meal break. As he raises his eyes to the roof where Sherlock stood he’s stopped in his tracks. That can’t be right ... there’s all sorts of paraphernalia up there he didn’t spot before; air conditioning units and skylights, and piping and ducting. There are men working on the roof ... _and since when did they put safety railings up there_? Were they there before?  This is all very confusing.

John hauls himself up from where he is sitting and limps curiously along the pavement behind the stone benches, still looking upwards. There’s bus at the stop blocking his view up Giltspur Street, and when John brings his viewpoint back to ground level, finally taking his eyes off the Pathology Building, it pulls away. This is when he catches a glimpse of the sleek black car, the one with blacked out windows, making its way steadily in his direction. That can only mean one thing, speak of the devil and he will appear.

The ex-Army doctor is going to have to think fast, he’s never in the mood to want to talk to Mycroft Homes these days. While he IS thankful that Sherlock’s brother might be taking the heat out from under Greg, John doesn’t want to be abducted quite at this moment.


	3. More Questions, No Answers

As John hobbles under the arches of the meat market at Smithfield he’s rapidly thinking about where he should go to next. Thankfully Mycroft’s car appeared in front of Bart’s, rather than observing him from afar, so he has time to check his options.

If he'd gone to the Barbican tube station he might have been caught but there is another option available to him. He leaves the cover of the market and crosses Charterhouse, and then slips into Cowcross Street. Here he is nearly safe. Another fast limp down past this area's Starbucks, where he’s sometimes bought himself coffee before one of his solitary vigils and he has reached Farringdon Station. There is still scaffolding and hoarding around the work being done there for Crossrail, and the footpath is still constricted and congested, but he dodges the commuters and gets to the platform for the Metropolitan line in relative safety.

It is then only a case of waiting impatiently until the train arrives, and climbing on it when he does. John’s leg is hurting now, and he’s glad for these new disabled-access friendly trains. He slumps down on the especially designated seat next to the door. “For the elderly, pregnant women, and those less able to stand”; the sign above it says it all. He draws breath; that was all too close for his liking. It is only a few stops from Farringdon to Baker Street station. Not enough to catch his breath properly of course but all he wants is to be home and feeling safe again.

Soon John is travelling on the escalators up to daylight and pushing his way through the morning rush hour. Then he’s out past Boots the Chemist and, heaving a sigh of relief, into the street.. Yes, he’s nearly home, but it’s just only past nine o'clock in the morning, and because of all that rushing about to get here, he’s exhausted all ready.

There is a black car drawn up at the kerb outside 221B as he turns the corner, with a driver patiently waiting inside it and Mycroft’s Blackberry toting PA sitting in the back. You don't outrun the British Government do you? You just wait for him to find you, abduct you and then do what he tells you to do. Anthea looks up and smiles and then turns back to tapping elegantly on her 'phone keyboard and John goes to open the front door. There’s no point in putting off the inevitable is there; might as well get it over and done with as soon as possible.

He hauls his bad leg up the seventeen steps and then he’s standing in the open doorway to 221B looking into the sitting room. Elegantly placed, in Sherlock’s chair as expected, is Brother Dear. Then Mrs Hudson walks into view from the kitchen to put a tray of tea things on the coffee table. John notices Mycroft still has his hand on the handle of his umbrella, which is planted at his side like a weapon. The man looks thinner, as if his fabled dieting has been done to excess. There's also emptiness in his eyes that John hadn't seen before Sherlock jumped, which quickly turns to his usual bland smile when he sees he’s being observed.

Mrs Hudson walks past John. ‘Mycroft seems to want a word with you, dear, so I'll just be going,’ she explains.

‘Yes, hello, John, good of you to join me, do sit down,’ the British Government says conversationally, regally, as if being the brother of John’s dead flatmate  gives him the right to take charge here. ‘If I’d known you were coming home I’d have given you a lift,’ he says smiling slightly, then straightening the cups on the tray and picking up the teapot, ‘shall I be mother?’

John nods and knows he’s lost the battle here already, there's no point in using up any more  energy which really is limited to him these days. He sits down in his chair and straightens his painful leg. The tea set, he realises, is their best one. The one that _he_ last poured tea from during the case with the two missing old ladies who really did get locked in a lavatory. Despite his grief he can’t stop a smile of reminiscence at the memory of the case. There was a young PC who was there when the old dears were found, and the poor copper couldn't stop humming a particular tune under his breath and John was sympathetic about that. Sherlock had been rude but John had told him to be quiet and let other people enjoy their references to popular culture.

'Are you still with us, John?' Mycroft asks a frown of concern on his face.

‘Sorry, I think so,’ the battered ex-blogger replies, pulled back to the painful present with a sigh. ‘What do you want, Mycroft, and what do I have to say to get you to leave me alone?’

Mycroft laughs in that strange way of his. ‘Oh, you know I'm incapable of that,' he replies passing over a cup of tea. ‘I only have your interests at heart and really want to help if I can.  Why are you fighting me so hard, John?’

John wishes his friends would just let him get on with things in his own way, let him do the job of mourning his friend in dignity and then move on. He’s a doctor and knows perfectly well about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief. People putting pressure on him will only make him dig his heels in making the whole process even more protracted.No-one seems to want to leave John to his own devices these days it seems. He understands why, but it’s still annoying. If it’s not Greg Lestrade or Mike Stamford dragging him out to take him to the pub, it’s Molly getting all upset around him at Bart’s, or Mrs Hudson being all motherly at home. And then there’s Sherlock’s brother.

‘Maybe I want to be left in peace,’ he says to Mycroft. ‘You've done enough,’ he tells the man, ‘paying the rent for me to stay on here until I decide what to do.’

‘It’s what Sherlock would have wanted,’ the Elder Holmes responds with a serious look and a nod. ‘His death was a great shock to everyone and in cases like this there is a need a period of reflection and adjustment.  I understand that may take many years for you John and I am quite prepared to help you in any way I can. You did so help my brother in so many ways, and I can't say that about many people in his life. If there’s anything at all I can do, and anything all you need all you have to do is ask.’ Mycroft really does sound genuinely concerned as those words are said, and human, and that makes John blink and look more closely at his dead flatmate's brother.

He watches as the other man daintily dunks one of Mrs Hudson’s biscuits in his cup and then bites into it. This is something he wouldn't have done when Sherlock was alive, there would only have been a rude remark made about the calories it contained. Perhaps though, now, for once, Mycroft might need them. He is looking older and a little more tired these days. The immaculately coiffed hair is thinner around the temples, and with loss of weight the skin on his face is tighter not looser. Losing your only brother would do that to anyone of course, thinks John; look at what losing a close friend has done to _me._ Perhaps it's the revelation in Starbucks that is aiding him in producing more charitable thoughts towards the man. Although Greg and Mike, and Molly and Mrs Hudson, have all, in their way, have been trying to get John past his grief by action, John realises Mycroft has done nothing of the sort. He seems to be watching over 221B, but not pushing its occupant to make choices, just yet. Yes, John gets texts from him occasionally, and Sherlock’s brother turns up at the flat and shares a cup of tea about every fortnight, but that’s about the limit. The car in West Smithfield was a bit of an eye-opener, but John can live with that. Perhaps the British Government was genuinely just passing by; just like Greg who was visiting Molly.

The two men sitting in 221B finish their tea in silence, and then Mycroft gets up to leave. ‘I'll let myself out, John, don’t worry about getting up,’ he says, and turns with a tight smile and a tap on the floor with his umbrella. Then he is just footsteps descending the stairs, bidding good morning to Mrs Hudson and the front door shuts.

**************

John spends a quiet day at home, watches the news again - more on the Locked Room but mercifully nothing about Sherlock or himself in that bulletin. Perhaps the press are finally going to let things lie for a while. He checks a few things on his laptop, replies to an email from a Forces friend still out in Afghanistan, and then goes to bed early. He sleeps as he always sleeps. He dreams as he always dreams.

As always there a dark coat falling, a wet, blood-stained pavement and dead eyes staring upwards at a leaden sky. There is an addition this time however and something has changed in John’s. Now he is not alone and he can see there is a another man standing in the distance, holding an umbrella, watching John as he watches the body fall.

 

***********

 

The following morning John is getting out of bed when the doorbell rings downstairs.  Mrs Hudson, an early-riser like him, as older people often are, is shouting up the stairs. ‘Don’t worry, John dear, I'll get it for you,’ she calls, then when the front door opens John, distantly, hears sobbing.

It’s a woman’s voice, John notices as he crosses into the kitchen to put the kettle on.  Then there are feet making their way upstairs hurriedly and Molly Hooper bursts into the flat. He is glad he put his dressing gown on before he ventured out of the bedroom, but he’s not going to get dressed yet. Molly needs looking after.

 ‘Oh, John, I am so sorry,’ she says as she rushes up to hug him’ John is not sure what this is all about. From her clothing, and by using his late flatmate’s methods of deduction, he realises she’s been out somewhere overnight.

 ‘Shush, it’s ok, it really is, Molly,’ he says, trying a calming platitude, as she sobs against his shoulder. He has to hold her for several moments, and he tries again as she quietens. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.

Molly pulls away from him, trying to regain control of her emotions and gulping air. The young woman is scrubbing tears away from her face and she looks embarrassed by her outburst.

‘Look, I was just about to make a cuppa,’ John continues, giving his gentlest smile, ‘how about I make you one too?’

‘That would be nice,’ Molly replies sniffing and goes to the sofa. She sits with her legs curled under her looking small, and crumpled. She is pulling her cardigan down trying to straighten her clothing.

‘Good,’ John nods. He puts two teabags into mugs, fills them up with hot water and hands over a box of tissues.   ‘I'll be back in a sec,’ he says and goes towards the bedroom. ‘Just, going to put a few more clothes on,’ he explains

As he dresses John can hear a lot of nose blowing, and someone getting up of the sofa. There are footsteps in the kitchen and then door to the fridge opens and closes. When he emerges, barefoot wearing his jeans and a shirt, Molly is coming out of the kitchen with tea. He sits down in his chair and smiles as she hands him a mug. Her face set with seriousness as she tries for calm after her outburst.

‘So what _is_ the matter, Molly,’ John says taking a first sip of tea.

‘It’s Sherlock’s ‘phone,’ she says, looking quietly terrified, ‘they're doing emergency work on the roof for ...’ she stutters over her words, ‘ ... for those really weird leaks we were having in the air conditioning. One of the workmen found it last night ... he didn't know what he'd found at first, a lot of people go up there for a smoke and talk on their phones while they are up there. We thought someone had dropped it but it wasn't theirs was it? Where it fell kept it out of the rain too, it seems to have been in perfect condition. ’

John has had a fantasy in his head for several months now, that finding Sherlock’s missing phone would give at least some answers to all the questions he has. Why it went absent in the first place he is not sure.  One moment he was receiving that last phone call from Sherlock, and then there was the plunge his friend took to his death. That was when it disappeared. There was certainly no phone found with Sherlock’s body, John is sure of that. For some reason he, Dr John Watson, was joint next of kin with Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock’s brother had asked him to collect Sherlock’s effects once they were released. The blood stained coat, the clothes and shoes all arrived in a brown paper package.  No ‘phone though. It wasn't up on the rooftop either, that only contained the dead body of one Jim Moriarty, or Richard Brook as he is identified as until proven otherwise.

Now all of a sudden the mobile has reappeared all John wants to do now is to rush down to New Scotland Yard but that would be totally the wrong thing to do.  After what he and Greg were talking about this morning, the start of the Yard’s investigation into Sherlock, any bad behaviour of any sort will not be in his interest. If the man left behind wants to get any information that might help him understand why he’s going to have to keep his head down and his nose clean. Inspector Lestrade needs leaving alone; but John knows his friend Greg won't keep hanging around if there is something important to know about.

 _Patience_ that is what Sherlock would have told John to have, it was never a good idea to make assumptions until all of the information was available. John has waited this long and is going to go on waiting for his mourning to pass for longer time.  Mycroft would be saying pretty much the same thing about waiting too, he thinks. John is perfectly happy to take both sensible pieces of advice from his dead friend and his still living brother.


	4. Ashes to Ashes

April turns to May, and as the June Holiday weekend comes and goes uneventfully, John talks regularly to Ella. Something is moving now inside him, he’s not sure what or why, perhaps it’s the better weather which seems to be continuing.  He certainly feels the need to go for a walk somewhere though, to get out of the flat and away from Baker Street.

As he eats his muesli and toast an idea forms, and as it’s a nice day he gets his walking stick, puts on his coat, and picks up his Oyster Card. A few steps across the road and round the corner and he has caught a 189 to take him to Paddington Old Cemetery. Perhaps rather than staring at the skyline in West Smithfield he should be spending some time thinking at Sherlock’s grave.

He gets off the bus at the stop just past the old State Cinema on Kilburn High Road and he limps along past the Tesco Express on Willesden Lane he realises he needs milk. At Christchurch C of E First School the children are running around and shouting in the playground because they’ve just come out on morning break. Further up the hill past the cemetery gates is another small parade of shops and The Olive Tree, a store selling organics and health food. The staff are always young and cheerful and the small coffee machine behind the counter and produces extremely good cappuccinos. John had discovered the shop in March when he was visiting the cemetery and got caught out in a sudden downpour. He’d gone inside, ostensibly to hide out of the weather conditions until it was safe to wait for a bus. This morning he is in the mood for a cup something to take with him to the graveside, so he stops to buy himself one. He’s sentimental enough to wish he wasn’t walking with a stick so he could carry another with him into the cemetery for Sherlock.

He’s only been to the place where Sherlock is buried three times before this sudden urge hit him this morning.  Once was with Mrs Hudson the day after Mycroft had rung tell him where Sherlock’s ashes had been interred; he would rather forget that instance and the emotion it caused. The second time was in late February when they’d had the sudden shock snow storm which even stopped buses running around the capital. He’d been staying with Harry up until then, but that was the weekend her central heating had packed up too. She’d gone to a friend's, and he, reluctantly, had moved back to Baker Street. At least he could get a fire roaring in the grate, and Mrs Hudson welcomed him with open arms and home cooking. Although it was painful at first, he was glad the elements had conspired to drive him back to the flat.

When the roads were cleared enough he’d eventually decided to go and see how Sherlock’s resting place looked under a blanket of snow. The hill down to the grave site had been a bit of a liability with his walking stick and dodgy leg, but he’d managed it. The stark black granite stone with its gilded lettering had looked extremely impressive surrounded by gaunt dark trees and an unbroken carpet of white. It was rather like John’s memories of Sherlock himself, in his black coat standing out against the London landscape, his mind working on the details of a case. John had managed only a few minutes before the cold of the snow had seeped into his shoes and started his leg hurting. Then he’d limped off, more depressed than when he started, to find a bus back to Baker Street to get warm.

The third time he came here was the visit late March, when the wind was squalling and weather was threatening to rain. Before there were always flowers on the grave; perhaps Molly, someone Sherlock had helped over the years, or one of his homeless network were placing them there. That day there were no floral tributes, and John was again the only visitor in this part of the cemetery. Only a young and gangly gardener was there to keep him company. Under his standard issue waterproof the employee's hoody was half over his head against the inclement weather, but a few stray wisps of bright orange hair still managed to escape and blow in the wind.

At Sherlock’s grave John, by now feeling cold and damp, had decided it was a very bad idea to stand about and be buffeted by the weather. He had turned round after only a few moments, and his way back made him pass by the member cemetery staff out working in the storm. The man was kneeling half across the path up to the chapel on the hill, and was totally absorbed in clearing a patch of nettles threatening to overrun the path down the hill. Still, the gardener was friendly enough, nodding a hello even though he kept his head down when John squeezed past him and hailed him as a fellow sufferer in the storm.

At the cemetery gates the heavens had really opened, and that was when John had rushed over the road and into The Olive Tree and found solace and a cup of coffee. There was a cheerful young girl serving behind the bar who was chatty and he enjoyed talking to her. She was obviously foreign -- he thought her accent was Eastern European, he could have used Sherlock to tell him whereabouts from -- and she enjoyed telling him about all the people who visited the cemetery, and who popped into the shop most often to get a cup of coffee. He felt happier after that conversation and somehow comforted to hear about other fellow bereaved souls being comforted as well. He made a mental note to pop in if he was ever over in the area again.

So today, in warmer weather, John is limping his way down the hill to Sherlock's grave again. He is carefully carrying his coffee in one hand, and leaning on his stick in the other. He had to admit his friend's grave was in an impressive location. The black stone with Sherlock’s name on it is shaded by its own personal pine tree and visible right from the top of the rise. When you reach the bottom of the hill the grass spreads around it into an open lawn. There is a plastic wrapped bunch of colourful lilies by the stone and a couple of those hand-written notes from the ‘We Believe in Sherlock Holmes’ contingent – he’ll have to clear them up. These followers of Sherlock have even got to the telephone box outside Bart’s hospital giving the security staff _there_ a clean-up job not to be envied. John wonders what Sherlock would have thought about all of this adoration. Probably have dismissed it with a wave of his hand and made a very rude remark.

He sits down carefully against the tree next to the grave and sips his coffee. He can hear birdsong as the cemetery’s feathered inhabitants get on with their lives, hopping and flying around. With his eyes shut and can identify chaffinches by their call, there was a female blackbird hopping around Sherlock’s grave site earlier but a male blackbird, in a tree over to his left, is singing with all its might. The grass round the base of his tree is providing a very soft place to sit on, nearly a century of pine needles falling around it creating a personal cushion. Perhaps John will have a nap here before he goes back to Baker Street; it’s not that he has anything more pressing to do today, and Greg will call him if he needs to tell him anything about the ‘phone.

What John doesn’t see, as he drifts off into the silent land of relaxation is a figure watching him. Beyond the path that skirts the lawn of grass are more graves and an ornamental crab apple tree, man standing there in its shadow. Were John to try and identify the he’d have recognised as the gardener who he’s seen before in the cemetery at least once before. Even in this warm weather the young man has his hoodie up, bright ginger curls are still managing to find a way to fall out over his face. He seems to be waiting there; there's a hoe against the trunk of the shrub and he has a pair of lopping shears in one hand. He has a half smoked cigarette between two fingers in the other as if he's forgotten it's there.

What John definitely wouldn’t have expected though, is for the gardener to leave his work, drop his cigarette and stub it out, and walk silently towards the pine tree and its sleeper. The tall man stands with his hands in his pockets for a moment looking down and then he shakes his head. He leaves after that, returns and collects his tools, and with one last look back at the sleeper hurries away up the path towards the chapel on the hill. 

*******

It’s his friend’s face that breaks Sherlock’s nerve as he stands over his sleeping form in the cemetery. It’s the first time in months he has been nearer John than watching him from across the road, or the other end of a street. He’s seen John’s limp return, and how that’s worried Mrs Hudson; he’s seen her clucking as she’s stood in the doorway to 221B more than once. He’ followed her around the streets too and seen her looked tired, and older than she should for a woman of her limitless energy. He’s seen her standing at his grave site in Paddington Old Cemetery too.

                 
Then there’s Lestrade who Sherlock has only been able to catch up with on two occasions at a crime scene, and who he’ had to rely on his Homeless Network to keep an eye on. From what he’s learnt the DI’s face is grimmer, his jokes less frequent than they once were, and his team is working more closely around him. It’s good to see he’s getting support, even if it is from Donovan and Anderson.

                 
Of course Sherlock’s had more to do than monitor those he cares for, the three friends Jim Moriarty threatened with his goons with guns. Finding out as much as he can about the criminal network that has been left behind after it's leader's death, and hunting down three specific assassins and getting them to justice, is taking time.  The suicide of the criminal mastermind on the rooftop at Bart’s has left his people in disarray. This is the best time to strike if they are to be dealt with, and there is a still lot to do, but in quiet moments Sherlock is hopeful his self-imposed exile won’t last forever.

                 
Of the three men in question, so far it’s one down, two more to go, and more tip-offs sent to Lestrade’s team anonymously yesterday. Sherlock’s homeless network has been invaluable with their contacts with a number of police informants. That he has been able to plant several in useful positions, where they can watch for him, has also helped his cause.

                 
 Polish Anna is a girl who Mycroft managed to place in a job at the Olive Tree next to Paddington Old Cemetery during Moriarty’s trial.  The plan had, Sherlock needed to ‘die’, had specifically decided on a cremation of a stand-in body and no funeral with the ashes deposited where they are now. Everyone locally knows the shop on Willesden Lane does good coffee, and anyone who goes to the cemetery calls in there at some time of another for a chat. Anna is a master of drawing information out of people by conversation and also keeps tabs on who else calls by.

                 
This morning she’s already texted they’ve had a visit from the woman who Sherlock prevented being murdered by her stepfather’s pet snake; presumably here to put flowers on the grave again. Then he gets another text saying John is there again this morning. Sherlock texts her back, telling her to give him decaffeinated coffee instead of his usual, and to talk to him for a while to slow him down.

                 
 A quick change of clothing and a taxi over to the cemetery – he comes in the back way as usual --and Sherlock is ready to check on his friend once again. Playing the part of the gardener while his flatmate visits the empty grave is as easy as it was before. Sherlock comes here more often than he would like to let on, finds himself standing in front of a gravestone with his own name on it. It’s quiet and peaceful here, and clipping bushes and raking grass allows him to think. The cemetery also has bee hives, it’s the home of the aptly named Tombstone Honey that they sell at the Olive Tree, and he’s had some fascinating conversations with the apiarists.

                 
What he wasn’t expecting today though, was for John to fall so fast asleep beside the grave.  That’s what made him careless, made him take those few steps nearer, so he could look more closely at his friend. The instinct that has Sherlock reaching out to touch John sends him walking away as fast as he can, collecting his tools before he can do something more stupid. He allows himself to look back once and then he’s back in character dropping the hoe and shears with a ‘colleague’ by the gates. He tells them he’s got to go and deal with something and he’ll be back as soon as he can be. Once turned the corner he is back as himself though, running along Willesden Lane, and hailing a passing taxi.

                 
The student flat he’s been renting, the base he has been using since he stopped hiding at Molly’s, has torn net curtains and is at the farthest end of Baker Street.  Checking right and left, and seeing no one is watching as he nears his ‘accommodation’, he climbs the wall in the back lane as he always does. Being in such a big a city as London, and the way it affects her inhabitants, is something he has often used to his advantage during his cases.  More people in less space makes the average person in the street turn off what is going on around them. There are no little old ladies here twitching curtains in this part of the city, only students and immigrants and workers in the morning rush with earbuds plugging them into their own personal noise. In London, if you want to remain anonymous, no one is stopping you.

                 
In his tiny accommodation Sherlock strips off his disguise and takes the packet of hair dye he’d left lying on the table when he left in a hurry this morning. The cupboard his landlord calls a bathroom only has a tiny shower and a toilet in it, but it’s enough for him to return his hair to an approximation of its normal colour. He sighs with relief when he sees someone he recognises in the mirror. Then he dresses, throws himself onto the narrow bed by the window, and lies staring upwards with sightless eyes.

                 
On that day in January, with a body on the pavement below Bart's, paramedics in attendance and pre-bagged blood running into the gutter, Molly quietly slipping up the fire escape had gone unnoticed. Sherlock had told her exactly he’d drop his ‘phone, and where she should store it until he got a message to her that it was needed again.   It’s all part of a long pre-planned carefully charted and planned timetable he, his brother and his helpers are keeping to during the plan to deal with Moriarty’s Web. The most important thing was to let the Met get their investigation into him started, but at their own speed. Today a small article a the Guardian newspaper he picked up in a Starbucks told him the date it is to begin and he is glad to see that Inspector Dimmock is in charge.  Sherlock is thankful for small mercies that Mycroft used his influence to prevent someone, who might be less sympathetic, being brought in from another force. He’s also made sure his ‘dropped’ phone has made its way to exactly who needs to see it.

                 
The consulting detective remains motionless on the bed in the student flat until it gets to late afternoon. At 4.15pm he has his laptop out from under the bed and is downloading something onto an SD card. He puts on his jacket, carries his coat with him, and hails a taxi leaving from Marylebone Station; he’s off south of the river, and as it is Saturday evening he can take advantage of the crowds and meet with a contact.

 

*************

For the first few months as a dead man -- Sherlock thinks of this as a trip to Hades; not the Christian Hell but more the classical Underworld -- he’s had to remain in disguise. The most dangerous threat to his liberty was certainly one of Moriarty’s assassins, not the one sent to shoot John, not the gorilla with a monkey wrench in Mrs Hudson’s flat, but the plant in Lestrade’s office. The disaffected Detective Constable in Jim’s pay could have blown Sherlock’s cover at any time and set two other assassins to fulfil their contracts killing his friends.

                 
As usual there’s been an overlap in his detective work; one of the last of the cold cases worked on for Lestrade, an unsolved stabbing in Whitechapel two years ago, is related to the man planted into the NSY office. Chief Superintendent seems to have come up on the radar linked to Moriarty's web via fraud charges and may be how the dodgy DC ended up in Lestrade's office. At least this is a simple part of the web to untie when Sherlock sees the links and sends out his network to comb for evidence. Just one of them, ‘Coming forward with information because they felt bad about the poor dead copper,’ and pointing to the relevant document had the case reopened. PC Walthamstow, Lestrade’s gunman has been charged in relation to the murder of his colleague and it looks as if Moriarty used that knowledge to blackmail him into taking the job. John’s gunman is in custody, Mrs Hudson’s assassin is somewhere on the continent and Sherlock needs to go after him and meet a contact in Prague. At last the hoody wearing gardener from Old Paddington Cemetery can stop working there because Sherlock is free to become himself again.

  
Late Saturday afternoon on the South Bank is busy as he expected, tourists milling up and down the Thames Path in both directions as they visit the riverside restaurants and attractions. This is fine as he can join the throng and disappear in its midst. The Consulting Detective knows something else about London and this is that if you want to be invisible in it, you don’t have to try hard. People just don’t pay attention, as he was always saying (repeatedly) to John and Lestrade. His taxi drops him on the southerly end of London Bridge and he drops down to river level and skirts Southwark Cathedral pushing his way through the crowds around stalls at Borough Market. The people selling the food are encouraging passing buyers to grab a tasty bargain to eat as they finish up for the day. The press of bodies in this restricted area perfect for handing over the SD Card to his contact unnoticed.

                 
Sherlock may have told John he didn’t eat during cases, but after four months on the run he’s learnt the real meaning of hunger. A particularly busy spree has meant it’s been a day and a half since he’s stopped for anything but tea or coffee; he only smoked half a cigarette in the cemetery too. He comes away from the food market with a plastic box filled Thai curry,  offered what was left in the pan behind a stall as the (female) stallholder wanted to get away for the night. There are also slightly squashed custard tarts someone else was selling for a pound each.  He takes them to a bench hidden by bushes by cathedral, hurriedly eats his food, and then moves off again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's 'grave' never really did look very real to me on screen (and even less so when you visit it) so I've opted for an urn of ashes rather than a body at the cemetery. We weren't given a location but the nearest, taxi-accessible one, to Baker Street is on Willesden Lane which I used to pass when walking to and from work when I lived there. It's had a 'not' grave in it before as it was used as the burial place for The Hand of Omega in the classic Dr Who story Remembrance of the Daleks.


End file.
